Young developers meet future employers at IT expo

Karachi: Young Fahim’s excitement was evident. And why wouldn’t it be? The famous fictional character Wall-E was right in front of him responding to vocal commands. The robot said its name in the typical robotic monotone when asked, and moved left and right when instructed.

“Impressive,” said one viewer, as the people standing near him nodded in agreement.

Muhammad Ibrahim, the developer of the robotic version of Wall-E, expressed his gratitude for the appreciation as any successful artist would after creating an impression on the audience.

At an exhibition hosted by Aptech Vision on Tuesday at the Marriott hotel, 200 such projects were displayed to professionals from the industry and academia. Aptech`s marketing manager Tabish Habib Fareedi while speaking to The News informed that out of more than 800 projects, only 200 had been selected on the criteria of uniqueness and economic demand.

Fareedi said the idea behind the exhibition was to connect the professionals in the industries with emerging developers. He claimed that more than 100 CEOs of leading IT companies had visited the exhibition. “Quite a number of the students have been hired today,” he said, with a satisfactory smile.

Another project, “Waterload detector”, created by Shahzeb Noor and his friends also attracted phenomenal attention of the visitors. The project featured a sensor designed to send emails to the relevant authorities in case of an alarming water rise. A friend accompanying Noor informed The News that the group aspired for their prototype to be installed in dams, industries and households.

Interestingly, a good number of Aptech students had created security-related prototypes and projects.

When The News asked the brains behind the “Laser Security System”, project head Muhammad Ali said due to the present security challenges in the country, the ideas usually revolved around the demand of security-related apparatus in the market. “We aim to contribute to the efforts of Pakistan Air Force and Army.”

The 5th Aptech exhibition attracted a considerably large crowd, as the organisers called the response “tremendous”. The developers, the du jour stars of the day, were listened to, asked questions and appreciated for their work.

“Pakistan has more potential than terrorism, we only need to discover it,” said Fareedi.

Though partial towards the efforts, gauging by the work on display at the exhibition, his words weren’t that far from the truth.